Once Impenetrable PS3 Cracked Wide Open

“The first hacker to successfully jailbreak the iPhone says he has pulled off yet another modding marvel, this time penetrating the previously impervious PlayStation 3 gaming console. The hack by 20-year-old George Hotz, aka geohot, is significant because the PS3 was the only game console that hadn’t been hacked, despite being on the market for more than three years. The feat greatly expands the functionality of the box by allowing it to run unrestricted versions of Linux and a wide range of games that are currently forbidden. The hardware and software designer told El Reg it took him five weeks to develop the hack using a combination of modifications to the console’s hardware and software.”

Yeah I also think that providing Linux support was what made it uninteresting to crackers. Still, 3 years is a loooong time for such a thing.

Indeed… but for distributed computing purposes, it was always still a bummer using the PS3 because two of the SPE’s, and the GPU were unavailable for calculation purposes…

Thus, using cracked PS3s for clustering could prove to be quite enticing. Add to that the lower power utilization and size of the PS3 slim and we may see another flurry of sales for these machines in the near future

Sony pretty much threw down the gauntlet when they removed Linux support from the PS3 Slim models…

Yup! Just another example of why its never a good idea to piss off the community…

They might’ve made an attractive target for people wishing to use the PS3 for clustering, and wanting full access to the SPE’s, and the GPU, but when you go out of your way to lock them out, that’s when the creative types start getting mad! Angry hackers are as we all know the dangerous kind…

I can’t wait to see what new uses will come of this! Now I’ll have to start keeping an eye on prices and seeing how well the PS3 performs as an XBMC player…and what SONY does in response!

Yup! Just another example of why its never a good idea to piss off the community…

They might’ve made an attractive target for people wishing to use the PS3 for clustering, and wanting full access to the SPE’s, and the GPU, but when you go out of your way to lock them out, that’s when the creative types start getting mad! Angry hackers are as we all know the dangerous kind…

–bornagainpenguin

I can’t really see how Sony are losing out. If anything, they’re likely to sell more consoles now.

I can’t really see how Sony are losing out. If anything, they’re likely to sell more consoles now.

Unless they’re not making any profit on their hardware.

It was purported early on in the console’s lifetime that Sony was intentionally losing money on every console they sold in order to gain marketshare. They would then make up for it on game licensing revenues and peripherals.

This means that anyone purchasing volumes of consoles for the sole purpose of clustering them, produces no real revenue for Sony with that pricing model.

With the lower pricing on PS3 Slim, it seems they’ve probably cut costs on manufacturing, but they’ve also removed the incentive to use them for clustering purposes, increasing the likelihood that each console sold will be used for actual gaming.

Sony lose money on console, they gain it back on games + PSN, now, there just going to lose money. They removed Linux support and some of the cluster capabilities to prevent abuse when it come to building a super computer.

I can’t think that it’s a bad thing either. As long as people or companies buy PS3 (no matter what they use it for), Sony still gets the money for it and in the long run it will become more popular (hopefully).

To get hold of a PS3, you need to buy one first. There Sony should already be smiling because they got another sale. Whatever happens to that PS3 after it was sold should not be Sony’s problem. The more uses for a device, the better for the company producing that device.

I see no problem. Saying that, I also don’t agree with a company telling me what I can or can not do with a device I purchase with MY hard earned cash. After I purchased it, it’s mine!! 🙂

To get hold of a PS3, you need to buy one first. There Sony should already be smiling because they got another sale. Whatever happens to that PS3 after it was sold should not be Sony’s problem. The more uses for a device, the better for the company producing that device.

Sony makes a profit on every game sold. If people start modding their consoles and pirating games, Sony loses money.

On the other hand, is it right for a company to lock down a device to keep people from pirating content? That’s the million dollar question. Some people will say that locking down devices/content does nothing to prevent piracy, but with the PS3, it managed to prevent it for 3 years now, and there’s still no workable hack out in the wild.

I think its right and in-fact necessary for a company to lock down their stuff. It ensures publishers that Sony cares about pircay. It ensures the shareholders that Sony cares about not letting people hack the console and mess with their profits, its ensures the government that the consoles can’t be hacked for possibly dangerous activities. What I don’t agree with is them trying to sue you if you happen to know how to hack it.

Either way the so called hack (which hasn’t even been released let alone confirmed) hacks the hypervisor. I thought that Sony removed the hypervisor from the slim models to save costs and that is really the main reason why Linux doesn’t run on the slim? If that is the case then the hack may not work on a slim. Also the title is very misleading. The PS3 is not hacked “wide open”. The hardware keys are still in place at the moment and the guy still hasn’t confirmed if he has hacked those. Sony can just kill the hack with a mandatory firmware update. Also you have to commend Sony for lasting 3 years without getting hacked. Thats pretty tight security in our fast moving field. It took less than a year to hack the xbox360, e with full iso available online. I doubt someone is going to be downloading a library of 50GB isos anytime soon no matter how cheap hard drive space is.

its ensures the government that the consoles can’t be hacked for possibly dangerous activities.

That statement is kind of amusing since the U.S. military is using PS3 clusters themselves.

Either way the so called hack (which hasn’t even been released let alone confirmed) hacks the hypervisor. I thought that Sony removed the hypervisor from the slim models to save costs and that is really the main reason why Linux doesn’t run on the slim? If that is the case then the hack may not work on a slim. Also the title is very misleading. The PS3 is not hacked “wide open”. The hardware keys are still in place at the moment and the guy still hasn’t confirmed if he has hacked those.

Indeed, it appears to use the OtherOS feature (BTW, the hack has been released, with some instructions on how to execute it:

Either way the so called hack (which hasn’t even been released let alone confirmed) hacks the hypervisor.

“In the interest of openness, I’ve decided to release the exploit. Hopefully, this will ignite the PS3 scene, and you will organize and figure out how to use this to do practical things, like the iPhone when jailbreaks were first released. I have a life to get back to and can’t keep working on this all day and night.”

You really can’t tell what his motivations were. The unit he hacked just happened to be one that was donated to him a year ago, but he only spent 5 weeks on the hacking effort (per the article), so for all you know he started the hack when he heard the Slim models would no longer support Linux.

Anyhow, he claims his motivation was simply to do it… but I suspect the challenge became even more enticing once Sony started locking down the console by removing alternative OS (Linux) support… it was bound to attract more attempts either way.

This should not make it as a news piece until he releases the hack, or proof at least. Until then, it is just “someone somewhere saying something”. Whether his background makes his statement credible or not has nothing to do with it.

The PS3 makes a poor computer with its 256 MB of RAM. Linux does support the Cell processor and there are low-level APIs to take advantage of the SPE units. However, most of the capability isn’t when running a standard Linux distro ported to the Cell because the apps themselves aren’t optimized to utilize the SPEs.

So its more like running a PowerPC G5 with 256MB RAM. IIRC, the Cell also uses in-order execution, which means overall computing performance is slower than an out-of-order execution CPU because not as many instructions are processed per cycle.

I have the original 60 GB with emotion engine CPU for hardware backwards-compatibility with the PS2. So this announcement means little if you have the original systems.

The new slimline model removes so many features that I’d surely choose an Xbox 360 instead with it’s better exclusive titles.

Sony does not make a profit off of the console; the lose money. So, more consoles being sold = genuinely losing money (Not, “we lost money because we didnt’ make as much”. There is a real, actual loss)

Sony removing linux support in the slim has little to do with it.

They make most of the money via game licensing. However, since the main purpose of modding a console is for piracy, pure and simple. The other stuff is merely an after effect.

Modded consoles generally don’t have a lot of homebrew stuff that gets used by a lot of people. The orignal xbox is an exception, but Sega did suffer greatly due to piracy of dreamcast games. The Wii wasn’t modded for homebrew. There is none for the Xbox 360, and nearly none for the playstation.

The ammount of people actually running linux on the PS3 is insignificant. That is why sony removed support from the slim: It cost money to maintain, and there really wasn’t much interest.

The ammount of people actually running linux on the PS3 is insignificant. That is why sony removed support from the slim: It cost money to maintain, and there really wasn’t much interest.

It might be insignificant, but it was clearly being used. You can find PS3 clusters being used all over the place for scientific research already – there are companies who had built cluster-building services around the PS3… so stating that there wasn’t much interest seems like a short-sighted statement to me.

I think the majority of people who truly appreciated the Linux compatibility already own a PS3 with Linux support, so dropping Linux support in the slim doesn’t truly affect them. Most of those who deride Sony for dropping support would never have actually purchased a PS3 and run Linux on it, so Sony’s decision doesn’t really affect them, either.

And, continued support of Linux does cost Sony money, as they do have to maintain the VM that Linux runs in. Each new firmware update requires testing (and perhaps adjustments) to the VM to ensure compatibility. Luckily, Sony is still supporting the VM on existing PS3 revisions.